


can i exhale?

by charjace



Series: The Losers Club Meet Sabrina Carpenter! ( Song Fics ) [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charjace/pseuds/charjace
Summary: they're just kids, they just want to breathe, they need to exhale!
Relationships: The Losers Club & The Losers Club (IT), The Losers Club/The Losers Club (IT)
Series: The Losers Club Meet Sabrina Carpenter! ( Song Fics ) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594975
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	can i exhale?

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to tag this the best i could, if you think i'm missing one, let me know!
> 
> based on sabrina carpenter's EXHALE

** can  ** ** i ** ** exhale for a minute? **

His world had been lost the moment he had lost his baby brother, he was just a kid when his brother would never be coming back, there would always be an empty space within his heart that could never be filled. Walking into his own home, was like walking into a stranger’s place. It was so cold, it felt very hard to be there, it was like he had also died  along side his brother, or maybe his parents cared more about  _ him. _ Did they even care about their other son? Their now only living son? It’s so distant as he sits at the dinner table and they’re only a few feet apart, but it feels like they’re miles away from him. He speaks, he tries to get the words to flow perfectly out of his mouth because maybe then, maybe  _ then _ they’ll notice him. Maybe they’ll give him a hug again, or they’ll smile that bright and proud smile.  _ He thrusts his fist against the post, and still he insists he sees the ghost _ , words he repeats like a fucking mantra, trying to get them out without a stumble, without a repeat – with a  ** stutter. ** _ He thrust his _ \- maybe they’ll love me again –  _ against the post _ \-  i miss him too - _ and still he _ \- do I mean anything to you? Mum? Dad? -  _ insist he sees the ghost _ \- I'm sorry, it’s my fault.

The guilt eats at him, it eats and eats until he can’t breathe and guilt is the only feeling he knows. So much guilt and fear, he’s drowning in it. There was no escaping it, even if he tried too – even he wanted too, it was always there. He didn’t have to lie; he didn’t have to be so selfish. He can’t help but feel like it was his fault, that _ he _ got his brother killed.  Drowning in the guilt with no hand to grab hold of, no one to save him, as he sinks further down into the darkening water.

** can  ** ** i ** ** get this out in the open? **

A mouth that gets him into trouble, a mouth he doesn’t know how to shut and all this stupid stuff falls out and he’s sprinting for his life because he couldn’t clamp his mouth close long enough to bite down on that retort that was fighting its way out. Bullies on his tail for too many reasons, can he even count them all on his hands? His glasses, his high grades, his friends, his fucking _ trash _ mouth, his... It’s just words and he  hates how deep they cut as they’re thrown his way, when they’re thrown towards his friends. It’s just one word, but it hurts like hell when it’s been thrown as an insult – and when it’s being said by the local bully who hates everyone, but especially him and his friends.

It’s hard to know that what he’s feeling are things that you shouldn’t - that he had always told were wrong. Friends parents to the kids in the school, using those words and terms as insults. So, he hides that part of himself, he knows it’s there – but he can’t show it, not to anyone, he can’t give them anymore fuel. He buries it deep down, into a pit that no one can open. That not even that loose  trashmouth of his can even let out. It’s the one thing he can manage to clamp a hand over, to hit with a shovel and dig it’s grave. That is where he’ll go with this, he can’t let anyone know.

** can  ** ** i ** ** sit down for a second? **

There weren’t many that looked like him in this small old town. This small old _ racist _ town, there was so much wrong with this god forsaken town that he never got why his family stayed here. They should have just packed up their things and left before he was even born, moved to a place where they would have been more welcomed. There were a few nice people around town, he knew their names and little things about them – but that was it. He didn’t have anyone to call a friend, it was just him because no one wanted their kids to hang out with him because he wasn’t as pale as they were. He was too young to know what all those stares meant, but he always knew. He always fucking knew what those stares meant, what those people who tried to discreetly move their kids away from him.

He plans to get out of this foul place, to leave it behind in the dust because all it ever seems to do it bring him down, and push him around. Tying his hands behind his back, making things so much harder for him just to do the same things any other kid could. He wants to be free, he wants to see his hands out in front of him, to be able to go somewhere where he no longer feels like the outsider. That is all he’ll ever be in this hell of a town, a boy with his hands tied behind his back, trying to fight for his freedom that everyone wants. For now, he’ll be the bigger man, he’ll block out those words, he’ll not show them his tears or how they’ve hurt him – because in the long run, they won’t matter.

** can  ** ** i ** ** breathe? **

Living in a constant state of fear, of being sick, of getting hurt is something he wishes he could control, but with everything his mother has told him, it makes it hard. The water can get you sick, a small cut – a strange dog. Everything has the potential to make him sick, or get him hurt but he still goes out. He’ll just be careful, he doesn’t do anything yet, he always does. He has to sit and listen as his mother talks about  _ this _ and  _ that _ . About all these cancers, of all this god dam sickness and how he can avoid them. The watch on his wrist, a constant reminder – a beep means an hour has gone by sweetie, take your pills – of his health, along with the rattling the pills make with each step he takes. A sharp intake of air, and a closing around his lungs – and he pulls the trigger as he closes his lips around the thing that he never leaves home without.

There was always something about his lungs that made him question what was true, but why would the adults lie? Why would adults lie to a kid, and tell him he is sick when he isn’t? He never gets an attack while running, or when he’s found himself around smoke – it was more _ emotional _ things, but he’s just a kid, and all he can do is just trust the adults who tell him that he can’t breathe properly, that he needs to take this, just so he can breathe. He blindly puts his trust in the people who can, and who  _ will _ hurt him the most in his life. The adults.

** can we talk it out?  ** ** i ** ** don’t get it. **

Order is what drives him, it makes him feel in control – it makes him feel better. He knows that the others don’t understand it, he doesn’t think they ever will. When things aren’t in order, he can’t get his mind around it. His mind can’t accept it, he could try – he very well could try, but it just hurts too much and he can’t do it. He can do scared; he can do fear – but he can’t do things that aren’t real; things that don't make logical sense. Something had happened once, but – it had to have been a weird dream, that he can make sense of. A dream, a  _ nightmare _ . Those make more sense  than if he truly saw what he did, so he pretends that he didn’t see it.

Perfect is something he strives to be. Thoughts of the unknown, they scare him more than any monster in a film ever could, because the unknown is so fucking unpredictable and it’s hard to plan if you don’t know. He can try, like when the bullies come for him – he can plan for that. He can’t plan for the unknown, and that’s scary.

** can  ** ** i ** ** calm down for a moment? **

Bruises littering pale skin, barely hidden by those second clothes that are always either too small, or too big. She tries to hide them away, but it doesn’t seem like it truly matters because the teachers don’t question anything, they move on with their lives as the stand at the front of the class – teaching every student. Time spent outside of her home was time she lived for, when her father was away for work, or with a friend or two. She would, after all the chores were done, find herself trying to find something fun to do – just to take her mind off what was happening in her life.

Outside of her home, she can breathe – there is fresh air, and her fear of saying the wrong thing is gone for a moment. For a brief moment before she has to take her feet back into that place, a place where her mother no longer lives because she was so sick that it got her in the end. Her mother, a small piece of light in this hell of a home – her oxygen mask, removed and forever lost in the fire of the smoking home. She thinks she can take  it, she tells herself she can – so she does, she tip toes her way around her father, around her words to make him not too mad. It’s what she learnt years ago, she’s now a professional – but, it’s getting harder, someone has put the world’s mode setting onto  _ extremely  _ _ difficult _ , and she was just trying to get past the level to see the next.

** can  ** ** i ** ** breathe for just one second? **

Is it truly being alone when that is all he’s really  know ? Friends didn’t come easily to him, and he never truly went out and made them. He was comfortable with his books and school work. With thinking up designs and looking at the buildings and seeing what he would do differently. Is it really loneliness when all  he’s known is his mother who feeds him until he can’t stand it. She tells him it’s because she loves him, and he believes her, he loves her – and he can’t bring it in himself to tell her no.

He would never call himself lonely, that he’s never truly felt that way because, to feel that way – you had to have had friends, and he hasn’t. Television and books were his friends, and he was okay with it. He could ignore the words thrown his way, the insults and threats given by the bully who doesn’t want to do his own work. He’ll ignore them until he can’t anymore, until there is blood drawn and he doesn’t know what to do but put his body on auto  pilot .

** CAN I EXHALE? CAN I BREATHE? **

Who puts the kids in a world that is so fucking cruel and mean, who makes them go through this all alone? 

Who gets to help the kid who just wants his parents to see him? The kid who wants his parents to just love him, and see was there? To see he was alive, that he was breathing – that he was hurting just as much as they were? Who is there?

Who is there to tell the kid who can’t keep his mouth shut, that it could have gotten him killed? To tell him that it’s going to be alright, and he doesn’t have to hide who he is? The kid who is too busy burying so much of himself, he’s covering it up with so much crude jokes to cover up the fact that he is hurting?

What about the kid who is waiting to grow up? The kid who wants to grow up too fast, just so he can escape the slurs and beatings? Who is there to make him feel safe, to make him feel accepted in a town that tells him that he doesn’t belong there just with a single look?

Does anyone have the heart to tell the kid, the poor healthy kid that he wasn’t sick? That he can do whatever he wanted, that he can build that dream and go for it? That he can run like the fucking wind, and run away from this hell that his mother has made of his life, that his mother wasn’t loving him the way she should be?

Is anyone going to be there to help the kid set his life back into the tracks? Help him to understand the things he is going through, the things he is seeing? To be patient with him as he works his mind around the changes that are being thrusted towards him in such a rush?

Who is going to find the girl with all the bruises, who still loves her father despite all the things he has done to her? Is someone going to tell her that she isn’t broken for still loving him? Can someone give her hope that she’ll find a way out of that hell?

Now what about the kid who is so use to being alone, is there a friend out there for him? Will someone be there to show him how to make a friend, or six? Is there someone who is going to make time for him, to make him feel like his thoughts are worth something more than a grade?

Can someone let these kids breathe? Can someone pull these kids out from the graves they’re digging themselves. Throw a lifeline out into the water where they’re drowning in all their thoughts, fears and guilt. Can someone help these kids out, before they lose their childhoods to more than this? Someone  send up a flare, these kids – they just want to fucking exhale. They've been holding their breath for too long, can someone just let them fucking  _ exhale _ .

**Author's Note:**

> i'm doing a series based in sabrina carpenter songs for this fandom, with a mix of ships, you can send suggestions to quccnofmean on tumblr!


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